Deviously ineffective: Ralph Reed has a long history of corruption--and of losing.

• Author: Kilgore, Ed

In the autumn of 1998, Georgians were jolted from their armchairs by television ads run by a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor with the nicely onomatopoeic name of Mitch Skandalakis. One commercial played what political writer Josh Marshall later described as "the D.W. Griffith card," charging gross incompetence on the part of Atlanta's predominantly black political leadership. Another featured an actor who resembled Skandalakis's opponent, state senator Mark Taylor, shuffling down a hallway at a well-known psychiatric and drug treatment facility near Atlanta. The ads were arresting, but they backfired. Skandalakis got stomped by Taylor, while a surprisingly high turnout among African Americans helped produce a victory for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes and other Democrats running statewide.

The Skandalakis campaign's top consultant was one of Georgia's most famous living sons--Ralph Reed. The former executive director of the Christian Coalition had left the financially troubled organization the previous year and launched a much-ballyhooed political consulting firm based in Atlanta called Century Strategies. The 1998 election cycle was supposed to be Reed's chance to prove that his political skills could stand on their own. But the reputation he developed wasn't the one he had hoped for. Republicans grumbled that his dirty tactics in the Skandalakis campaign were responsible for bringing down the party's entire state ticket. What's more, that campaign didn't seem to be the exception to Reed's modus operandi, but the rule. "Most [of Reed's clients] started out strong," wrote Marshall after the election, "with heavy appeals on moral issues (something Reed strongly advocated), faltered in the stretch, and, finally, resorted to a blizzard of low-ball (sometimes racially tinged) tactics before stumbling toward defeat."

Eight years after this ignominious debut in Georgia dectoral politics, there's another controversial Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of the Peach State, whom fellow-Republicans openly fear could produce another disaster for the statewide ticket. His name is Ralph Reed.

If only one person can be said to serve as the incarnation of the conservative coalition that rules America today, it would probably be Ralph Reed. A well-known figure in Republican circles dating back to his early-1980s leadership position in the College Republicans under the tutelage of one Jack Abramoff, Reed skyrocketed to...